


Portraits

by ungoodpirate



Series: Art Lovers [3]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Klaine, M/M, art student!Blaine, art thief!Kurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3449018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I need you to be my pretend boyfriend.” </p><p>Blaine nearly chokes. “You need me to be your pretend boyfriend.” What the hell kind of request was that? And how ready Blaine would be to say yes if only the word ‘pretend’ was struck out. </p><p>Kurt sighs in understanding of how ridiculous and rom-com the request sounds. With a chagrined smile he replies, “Yes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portraits

**Author's Note:**

> You'll need to read the rest of the series for this to make sense, but the first two parts are fairly short. Now fly, my pretties.

**Part 1**

Blaine loses himself in the thump of the bass. On the dance floor – where the music is too loud and the bodies are packed close – you might as well be no one and become everyone, part of a larger organism. It’s good to be anonymous sometimes.

On the dance floor, unknown hands touch him. It always makes him sizzle with excitement. For a second, before Blaine looks or realizes the hands are too rough or too wide, they could be the hands to the person he really wants.

Since Kurt left, Blaine has gone on a few first dates and had few hook ups, but they were never satisfying They were like have the low fat, sugar free, diet version – not that good and not really what you were craving in the first place.

A hand slips into his front pocket and then out. Blaine brushes his fingers the gap and finds a shred of paper sticking out from the denim, a note.

_Meet me at the bar._

And it’s signed – Blaine squints – the artist’s name of the painting he witnessed Kurt steal.

Blaine weaves and squeezes his way from the center of mass. There’s plenty of people at the bar, yell-talking into each other’s ears or drinking alone. Blaine examines each back and profile.

From behind him, a voice says, “Can I buy you a drink?”

Blaine turns on heel. “You.”

Kurt commandeers them two barstools and gets the bartender’s attention faster than Blaine’s ever managed.

“How’ve you been?” Kurt asks.

Blaine shrugs. How he is supposed to explain the emptiness of half his bed or the echoing quiet of coming home to no one. He had become spoiled after just weeks with Kurt there. Now that loneliness was around and inside him.

Their drinks arrive and Blaine’s quick to lift the beer to his lips. Kurt just draws his finger along his glass’ rim.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Kurt says, talking loud over the music.

“Should we take this somewhere else?” Blaine calls back.

“No one can eavesdrop here,” Kurt says, half-shouting over the ambient noise. “Plus, it’s not an illegal favor. Maybe a little immoral though.”

Blaine snorts. He can’t even remain bitter towards Kurt; Kurt, who promised him nothing, but couldn’t help but take Blaine’s heart along with him when he left. “If you need a place to stay—”

“Not that,” Kurt cuts him off. “It’s… bigger.”

Blaine takes another swig instead of asking for details and swells with temporary power when Kurt divulges. He deflates once he hears it.

“I need you to be my pretend boyfriend.”

Blaine nearly chokes. “You need me to be your _pretend boyfriend_.” What the hell kind of request was that? And how ready Blaine would be to say yes if only the word ‘pretend’ was struck out.

Kurt sighs in understanding of how ridiculous and rom-com the request sounds. With a chagrined smile he replies, “Yes.”

Blaine rubs his hand over his eyes. He’s a little dehydrated, a little tipsy, and sweat makes his shirt cling to the small of his back. “I think I’m going to need more details.”

“It’s for my dad’s benefit,” Kurt says. “He’s been… not well since I was in high school. He always worries that I won’t have anyone, if the worse happens. When I go visit him next, I want to show off my wonderful relationship.”

“You want me to help lie to your dad,” Blaine paraphrases.

Kurt lifts his chin. “I don’t need him worrying about me when he should be focused on his health.”

“Doesn’t he worry enough already, given…?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “He doesn’t know about that.”

Condensation rolls down Blaine’s beer bottle and swipes away a big splotch of it with his thumb.

“I know it’s a big favor.”

Tipsy and bitter mix into boldness, and Blaine dares ask, “What’s in it for me?”

Kurt places his hand on Blaine’s knee and slides it up an inch. “You know what’s in it for you.”

Blaine shifts away. “Kurt—”

He removes his hand. “Fine. I’ll give you a conman’s going rate. I’ll owe you one.”

Blaine dares again, raising a hand and extending two fingers. “You’ll owe me two.”

Kurt leans back on his stool. “You drive a hard bargain, Blaine Anderson. But okay. I’ll owe you two.” He slides down from his seat and leans in toward Blaine’s ear. “Now what do you say about getting out of here and going back to your place?”

Blaine starts to get hard at just the suggestion. “This doesn’t count as a favor,” he says.

Kurt hooks a finger in one of Blaine’s belt loops. “Oh, I know.”

…

Blaine clears his schedule for three day weekend out of the city. He doesn’t see Kurt from the morning after their deal to the morning Kurt said he’d be back to pick Blaine up. He’s outside Blaine’s apartment in a sleek SUV.

“Where we headed anyway?” Blaine asks once buckled in.

Kurt adjusts his sunglasses. “Ohio.”

“I grew up in Ohio,” Blaine says.

“So did I,” Kurt says, something tight in his voice Blaine can’t decipher. “Lima.”

“Westerville. Parents still live there.”

“As far as my dad is concerned, they’ve retired to Florida.” He sighs and starts the engine. “We have to go over our cover story on the way. My dad’s no fool.”

…

When they reach the interstate, Kurt starts to ramble off the facts of their fake relationship he had already constructed for them.

“We met at an art museum.”

“We _did_ meet at an art museum.”

“I’m keeping it close to the truth to make it easier for you. Now listen.”

They met at an art museum, but in a much more conventional manner. Their first date was coffee. Kurt worked as a high-end fashion consultant for select clientele. His profession involved a lot of travel, including the occasional international trip. Because of this, their courtship was slow, but recently they’ve been living together whenever Kurt was in New York.

“I have a fake address for that,” Kurt adds.

“Who am I in all this?” Blaine asks.

“Yourself,” Kurt says, glancing over from the road. “Blaine Anderson, art student, endlessly charming.”

“And why did you need me to do this?”

“I told you, I don’t want my dad –” 

“I meant, why did you need _me_?”

With the large sunglasses and with the excuse of keeping his attention on the road, it’s hard for Blaine to read Kurt’s face, although he scrutinizes anyway.

Kurt changes a lane before answering. “I know all sorts of… conmen, fences, hackers, thieves, mobsters… What I’m saying is that I know _a lot_ of professional liars. Some of them I trust enough to work with or at least not screw me over in a deal. But I don’t trust a single one of them near my private life, around my father.”

“But you trust me?”

Kurt nods once. “Exactly.”

…

For over the next hour they listen to the _RENT_ soundtrack and Kurt sporadically quizzes Blaine on the details of their cover story.  After the crescendo, harmonic last lyric of ‘No day but today!’ fades into ending, Blaine says, “I want to cash in my first favor.”

“Now?”

“I want you to tell me the story about your slow descent into crime. The one you wouldn’t tell me last time.”

“Well, well, well… aren’t you a sly one.”

Blaine drums his fingers on the door handle.  “You shut me up with sex last time I asked, so…”

“Well, I’m a sly one too,” Kurt says, corner of his mouth perked up. He shifts his hands to a perfect ten and two on the steering wheel and sing-songs, “If that’s what you want to waste a favor on.”

“It is.” When Blaine bargained for two favors, he had already decided what he wanted from them. First, he wanted, very selfishly, to know everything about Kurt.

Kurt slides his hands to nine and three. “Let me think how to start.” He’s quiet for maybe a stretch of a mile.

“After— after my dad’s heart attack, money was tight.” (These details about Kurt’s dad’s health and his mom’s passing were shared during the cover story. “If I had a boyfriend, he would know this,” Kurt had said in a detached, factual recitation while Blaine bit back his condolences.)

“I started shoplifting,” Kurt continues. “Saffron was the first thing I stole. That stuff’s expensive, but it’s supposed to be good for you and I was trying to make my dad eat healthy. I didn’t have the money, but –” He shrugs up to his ears. “I needed it. So I took it.

“I felt guilty, sure, but only up until I fed my father the soup I made him with it. Then I didn’t feel guilty at all.” He tisk-laughs as if in the fondness for the memory of his youth. “Few months later, I was having a bad day. Dad had a lousy check up. Probably caught some shit at school from some asinine bullies. I went to the mall and there was this _beautiful_ Marc Jacobs scarf. I didn’t need it, really. I just wanted something nice, for me.”

“So you took it,” Blaine says.

“Indeed.” Kurt sighs, all wistful and sated. “Blaine, you wouldn’t believe the rush.”

Kurt’s tone over _rush_ sends a shiver through Blaine’s veins and has him shifting in his seat. He’s heard something similar in the privacy of the bedroom.

“How’d you get from shoplifting to art theft?” Blaine asks after they both dwell temporarily in a deep quiet.

“First I shoplifted a whole bunch more,” Kurt says. “That’s crucial to the story. There was reason to them at first. Stuff for my dad. Stuff for me. Then just stuff, so I could have the fun of doing it. Of taking things that didn’t belong to me. It made me feel better. In control. I even made some chump change through eBay that way.

“Then I was, you might say, discovered.”

Being a natural act cliffhanger, Kurt interrupts his own flow then to announce it’s about time they stopped for lunch and spends the next twenty minutes searching out an appropriate restaurant.

Seated and orders taken, Kurt asks, “So what are you working on now? I mean, art-wise.”

Blaine rubs a hand over his face. This weekend away should be a weekend working. “Senior art project. I’m doing a series of portraits.”

Kurt stirs his water and ice with the straw. “Why portraits?”

Because of how sure Blaine’s hand felt taking charcoal to paper over the angles of Kurt’s profile. Because of Blaine’s advisor, always pushing Blaine to reach for a deeper level in his work, seeing the sketch and praising Blaine on catching the ‘inner spirit’ of his subject.

“I want to tell people’s stories visually,” Blaine says. “There is so much in the details of… body language and laugh lines and that spark in their eye. Or lack of it. I just have to reach that place…” He flexes his hands and makes a little move like serving to help get out the words, and quotes his advisor, “Of honest emotion.”

Blaine blinks and Kurt comes back into focus, hand propped on chin.

“You should talk about art more,” Kurt says. “You get all intense and adorable.”

Blaine releases a noise that’s not quite a laugh and not quite a squeak, and hides behind a menu.

…

When they reenter the car, Kurt leaves his sunglasses hanging from the collar of his shirt. Blaine gives him the courtesy time to fiddle with the vents, turn the radio to a dull hum, and find his way back to the highway before redirecting the conversation.

“So I believe you left off with being discovered?”

Kurt shakes his head, but Blaine knows him well enough to read the way his smile reaches his eyes – secret amusement of Blaine who’s not letting him get away with an inch.

 “Ah, yes, my mentor.”

“What’s his name, or her?” Blaine asks.

“Her,” Kurt says. “And she wouldn’t like if I gave that out. Professional courtesy.”

“Alright.”

“She saw me lift something. I didn’t think anyone was around, but she saw me. Ten minutes later she sat across from me the food court and made a smartass comment about it. I thought that was it. I was caught, she was going to call the mall cops, and I would have to explain to my dad. That was worse thing I could think of – that I would have to explain what I had been doing to my dad.”

Kurt dives into the story, telling it at a steady pace and filled with annotation that volunteered more insight than Blaine had anticipated. He absorbs every word and every breaking silence Kurt takes.

Kurt and his mentor started with the basics: sleight of hand, misdirection, and pick pocketing. They ran all sorts of street scams, junior league stuff. Not really worthy his mentor’s time except as a teaching tool. To her the profits were spare change and she let Kurt keep any money made during these practices. The pigeon drop, the pig in the poke, the false good Samaritan, the fiddle game, and the basic distract and grab. Blaine tries to catalogue these terms to Google later. 

It was a slow escalation of scores. They didn’t use guns or force. Instead they slipped into wherever they needed to be with charm and stealth. It was such a grand story, almost poetic.

Part of Blaine questions if this indeed the truth or the purest version of it, knowing how elaborately Kurt had spun the details of their fake relationship. He decides he’ll believe it; he’ll believe Kurt. Blaine knows it’s said there is no honor among thieves. They aren’t thieves, though, Kurt and Blaine. They’re lovers. Or, they’re… something.

Kurt climaxes his tale with his first big solo score – it involved a forgery, the Met, and tear-a-way suit – and Blaine interrupts to ask, “How do you do it? How do you do something like that and not be afraid?”

“I’m afraid every damn time,” Kurt says, balancing both bemused and matter-of-fact in his tone that makes Blaine a little annoyed and a little more in love.

…

Nine hours is a long drive. By the end of it, Blaine’s cramped and fidgety, but he’s lasted longer than he thought with the distraction of Kurt’s existence in the same relative space. He doesn’t take a second of this trip for granted.

About an hour out Kurt starts talking in circles, saying, “This is a ridiculous plan, but I can’t just tell my dad I lied about having a boyfriend. He’ll start questioning everything I’ve ever told him. It will call come un-spun.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Blaine says. “I’m already all the way here, and you’re my ride

Kurt glances at him. “I’m trying to convince myself.”

 

**Part 2**

“Break a leg,” Kurt says when he parks his big car in front of a small, suburban house. Kurt uses his own key to let them in the front door.

“Dad, we’re here!” he shouts as they enter.

It hits Blaine exactly what he agreed to, the moment Kurt’s father enters and tugs his son into a bear hug.

Kurt introduces them. Burt gives Blaine a firm handshake. His hands are callus rough– a working man’s hands – in way Kurt’s aren’t.

“Nice to finally meet you, Blaine,” Burt said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Blaine almost squeaks out _Really?_ , confused, because he only agreed to the plan a week ago. Kurt nudges his toe against Blaine’s foot.

Instead he says, “It’s nice to meet you too, sir.”

Burt claps him on the shoulder, tells Blaine to call him Burt. As soon as Burt turns to lead them into the kitchen where he has prepared dinner, Kurt gives Blaine an approving nod.

Over dinner, Burt asks Blaine all manner of questions about his life and Blaine answers as Kurt directed earlier, as himself. He talks about school and his art. Every so often Kurt jumps with added information or his own commentary, information he’d gleaned from their forays together and the chat they had over lunch. He even once laid his hand upon Blaine’s forearm as he leaned forward into the conversation, a casual act of affection. Blaine’s skin tingled through his sleeve.

Blaine offers to clear the plates, which is something he believes he would do if he were actually meeting the parent of his significant other. Kurt uses this time to scour the kitchen and scold his father over every food item not appropriate to a heart-healthy diet. All the while, Burt sighs, crossing his arms and reminding Kurt is _an adult_. It’s so obviously a regular banter between the two. At first father and son had seemed so dissimilar, but now they make Blaine secretly grin over the sink.

“Almost done with the dishes there, B?” Kurt says after a lull in the conversation, sidling up beside Blaine and laying his palm on the small of Blaine’s back.

“B?” Blaine questions under his breath, sure his voice is covered by the running faucet.

Kurt leans into Blaine’s ear. “It’s a cute nickname.”

Burt clears his throat. Kurt leans back, drops the hand, turns around and leans back against the counter. Blaine’s glad his pink cheeks are hidden over the steamy sink.

“Game’s about to start,” Burt says.

Kurt scoffs. “There’s always a game.”

“What about you, Blaine? You a sports fan?”

Blaine towel-dries his hands. “I’m into football. College football mostly.”

“What’s your team?”

“Buckeyes, of course.”

Burt squints at him, like trying to detect a lie. Father and son didn’t look too much alike either, except there was something about the eyes they shared.

“Kurt tell you to say that?”

“He grew up in Ohio, Dad,” Kurt says, accompanied by an eye roll. “I told you that.”

“You did? Must’ve forgot. Well, it’s not the Buckeyes playing tonight, but it’s something.”

…

They watch the game in the living room, Burt in a recliner and Kurt and Blaine on the couch. Kurt flips through a copy of Vogue. (“You still get the subscription?” Kurt asked when he found it on the coffee table. “Need something for you to do when I watch sports,” Burt said. Blaine thinks this is another conversation they repeat all the time.)

Burt goes to the bathroom at halftime; Kurt says crisply to Blaine, “Put your arm around me.” When Burt comes back, Blaine has his arm lain across Kurt’s shoulder and Kurt has sagged into him. Blaine can smell his hair. It’s distracting.

…

Blaine has trouble sleeping in Kurt’s bedroom, his little slice of insight into Kurt’s adolescent self. Blaine knows –Kurt told him – he left home at 18, post-high school graduation, with his mentor. The cover story was he was starting an apprenticeship in the fashion industry, while he was really continuing an apprenticeship in an entirely different area of study.

“I owe her a lot,” Kurt had admitted on the drive. “She gave me… well, there’s the obvious things. Skills and knowledge and connections. All invaluable, really. But it was the drive and the discipline I would thank her for the most.”

Blaine rolls over on his side. “Kurt?” he whispers. Sleeping next to Kurt is the easy part in its own bittersweet way.

Kurt mumbles in response.

Blaine swallows hard and figures he has to now ask at least one of the questions bounding around his head. “You said before… when you started working with your mentor, started stealing really expensive stuff, and working with dangerous people… you were scared?”

“Of course,” Kurt says, voice tired-hoarse. “Part of the rush.”

“How did you do it? Face it, I mean.”

Kurt peaks his eyes open slits. He says, “You start by needing something more than fear.”

…

 The next day Kurt takes Blaine to his dad’s auto-shop.

“He runs it part time now,” Kurt explains. “Mostly loyal customers. Less stressful this way. I make more than enough to take care of both of us.”

“So what are we really doing here?” Blaine says, because he doubts that it’s the alibi Kurt fed to his father: that he wanted show Blaine the place he spent a lot of time growing up.

“I need something,” Kurt replies. He strides from the reception area into the garage. Blaine follows.

Kurt squats and shifts some things under one of the tool benches that line the wall. He tugs out a plastic tool box, bright red, and plunks it onto the counter top.

“This was my toolbox when I helped out here,” Kurt comments distracted for Blaine’s benefit. He flips open the catch, removes the top tray, digs around briefly, and lifts out a key. He slides it immediately into his front pocket.

“What’s that for?” Blaine asks.

“Best you don’t know,” Kurt says as he reassembles the box and puts it away. “But…” He gets all up in Blaine’s space. “I’ve had this unfulfilled kink about doing it in here…”

…

After the garage, they go the grocery shopping and Kurt fills the cart with oatmeal and low-sodium versions of everything, inspecting the ingredient labels with shrewd eyes. After stocking the kitchen of the Hummel house with heart healthy foods, they spend most of the afternoon playing a rigorous game of Monopoly. Blaine’s not surprised at all when Kurt wins by a landslide. Burt fairs a lot better than Blaine does, probably more familiar with Kurt’s tricks.

Kurt stands and stretches. “I’m going to start dinner.”

Blaine’s about to offer to help, but Kurt settles a hand on his shoulder, communicating quite effectively that Blaine is supposed to stay here. Alone. With Kurt’s father.

“Don’t look so scared, kid,” Burt says after Kurt disappears into the kitchen.

Blaine flexes his hands on his knees. “Am I that obvious?”

Burt chuckles, leaning back in his armchair. “So obvious. You’re obviously head over heals for him too.”

No denial there.

“You’re the first guy he’s brought home.”

“He told me as much,” Blaine says. “It’s a first for me too.”

Burt adjusts his cap on his head as he glances in the kitchen’s direction. “Kurt had a hard time growing up here, being different. He didn’t get to do things like… take a date to prom or date at all really. He had to tough it out. Since he’s left home… Well, I’ve been worried that he’s been so used to toughing it out that he would never let anyone close.”

Blaine clenches his jaw and nods. Because he needs to say something, he says, staring at his lap. “High school is a hard time to be gay.”

“Now he has you,” Burt says and Blaine’s not sure it’s supposed to be a trick of a statement. After all, Kurt had to get his cleverness from somewhere. Thankfully Burt goes on, “I can tell he’s head over heals for you too.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

Shit. That was a screw up on Blaine’s part. He needs to save this. What would Kurt do? Well, Kurt told him sticking close to the truth made it the easiest.

“Honestly, sir, sometimes I can’t believe someone as amazing as Kurt is real, and that he would pick me.”

This seems to satisfy Burt, because he doesn’t speak with suspicion when he says, “He keeps up a wall. He really does. But I know my son, and I see the way he looks at you.”

Blaine digs his fingernails into his jeans.

“I looked at my wife that way.”

And he can’t breathe.

Kurt interrupts, spatula in hand. “You two getting along out here.”

Blaine blinks up at him, playing off Kurt’s ease. “Dazzling.”

“We’re talking about you,” Burt says.

“Only good things,” Blaine adds.

Kurt cocks a hip. “Well, of course.” Kurt tosses Blaine a wink, and it all crashes down on him, the reminder that this wasn’t real.

…

Another round of pillow talk, after dinner and showers and late night television, Blaine whispers, “You had it hard in high school?”

“Of course I did,” Kurt replies, more awake than last night’s talk. He twists an arm above his head on the pillow. “Someone like me.” Someone gay he means, and more, someone effeminate.

“You get hurt?” Blaine asks.

“Got thrown in the dumpster a few times. Locker checked. Had drinks poured on me. Typical verbal abuse…”  

“That’s it?”

“ _That’s it?”_

“Sorry, I mean…” Blaine presses a kiss to the side of Kurt’s face. “I’m just glad it wasn’t…” Wasn’t an arm in a sling, wasn’t feet kicking into you when you were already curled fetal on the sidewalk, wasn’t hearing your date sob in pain, a concussion, repressed anger, and so much lingering fear. “All bullying is bad. You hear horror stories sometimes.”

Blaine’s seen Kurt bruised. It was awful, but it was the result of a risky career. He didn’t want vitriolic, unadulterated hate to ever mare Kurt like it had Blaine. There’s a reason he lives alone.

Before his bashing, Blaine played the piano, he sang loudly and often, and auditioned for community theater. After his bashing, Blaine had quit music. It was too exposed, too preformative and loud. His once favorite activity had been zapped of all joy. Then he started art therapy and it became the one thing he could rely on.

…

They leave the next day. The nine hours are excruciating, because Blaine knows this is the final stretch, the last chapter.

“You going to tell me what happened to you in high school?” Kurt asks after the conclusion of the _Wicked_ soundtrack.

If Blaine had something to drop, he would’ve, the ways his fingers go lax in an opposite type of horror. “How did…”

“Most of what I do involves knowing how to read people,” Kurt says. “And no offense, Blaine, but you’re see through.”

Blaine exhales a huff. He certainly feels see through now.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Blaine says quickly, not even surprising himself. He wants to. He would’ve never volunteered his personal sob story, but Kurt asked. Kurt cared. Kurt’s the one personal in the galaxy Blaine wants to reveal himself to. He was just waiting for permission.

“I was, um, bashed. Me and this boy, a classmate. I asked to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me. He was the only other out kid in the school. It was just as friends. I thought I was being _revolutionary_.” He says this mocking, looking back on his tiny, naive pride. “When we were waiting for our ride after, this group of guys beat the shit out us.”

 “What happened?” Kurt says, tone an unreal steady.

“That’s what happened.”

“I mean… after.”

At seventy miles an hour, the road rushes by around them.

“My date, he moved away. My parents transferred to a private school with a zero tolerance bullying policy,” Blaine says. 

“And to the guys who attacked you?”

“… Nothing.”

Blaine watches Kurt’s chest move in a big breathe in and out.

“How old were you?” Kurt asks.

“Fourteen,” Blaine answers.

“Fuck.”

There was really nothing else to say.

…

About an hour out from New York City, Blaine announces, “I want to see you again.”

“Blaine…” Kurt says in a tone like an adult about to explain a difficult truth to a child.

“We’re good together,” Blaine says, twisting toward the driver’s side, eyes raking over Kurt for every action and reaction. “This weekend… it didn’t feel fake. You came to me for a reason. You said it yourself. You trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Kurt says in very measured manner.

“And you can’t say you don’t care about me the same way I care about you,” he says, knowing this opened him up to be wounded. It’s a gambit. Kurt admitted a little of his feelings for Blaine in the past, and shown it, Blaine thinks. Burt confirmed it. This was the first direct inquiry though.

Kurt nods. “And I do care about you. But it’s not that simple.”

“That’s bullcrap.”

Kurt glanced sideways at Blaine, unimpressed. “You don’t know as much as you think you do… I told you that I don’t promise these things –”

“Right, because it’s dangerous.” Blaine crosses his arms. “If you were so concerned about my safety you wouldn’t have come to me at all.”

Kurt’s quiet for a prolonged moment, and Blaine’s sure he trumped him on this one thing.

“Look, Blaine, even if my life wasn’t dangerous, it’s unpredictable.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “What I’m saying is that I’m not exactly relationship material.”

“Fine. I want to use my second favor.”

Kurt waves a hand. _Go on_.

“You have to come see me again. Within the next year, I want you to visit me again.”

“That’s what you want?” Kurt says, voice sharp.

“Yes.”

The rest of the ride is wordless and tense. Blaine has to wonder if he crossed a line, making demands, but he wants, he wants, he wants. He wants this more than fear.

…

Parked outside Blaine’s apartment complex Blaine takes his time unclasping his seatbelt, hoping for a goodbye. Before he exits the car, Kurt drags Blaine close by the shirt and presses a simple type of kiss on his closed mouth. “I’ll be seeing you,” he says.

There are all sorts of songs about people loving rock stars, wanderers, and restless spirits. Kurt is amongst them. Blaine hitches his overnight bag on his shoulder. Before shutting the door to the backseat he wants to figure out some perfect last thing to say.

He says, “I love you” and waits only a heartbeat before slamming closed the door. If he waited any longer there would be no ambiguity on whether Kurt was willing to say it back. Instead, Blaine doesn’t give him a chance.

Blaine steps back on the sidewalk. The SUV waits for the nearest gap in traffic and pulls away. Kurt’s a wanderer. Maybe it’s wrong to try and hold him down and glue him into a place he doesn’t fit.

Kurt will keep to his favor, Blaine’s sure.


End file.
